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Sunday, October 1, 2006

Star Trek remastered

Well, I got to see one of the sexed-up Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, with new CGI effects. It was "The Naked Time," certainly one of the best episodes. There were a number of nice touches -- Scotty's phaser cutting through the engineering bulkhead now has a visible beam; the PSI 2000 research station is now visible in the establishing shot of the snow-clad surface of the planet, the chronometer running backward on the bridge is now a nifty digital display instead of mechanical spinning numbers.

But I'm not sure what I thought of the CGI spaceship shots. They actually looked like CGI to me (as opposed to the CGI shots added to the Director's Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which still looked like filmed miniatures); there was something flat, and too vivid, about the look (at least on my 50-inch monitor).

Overall, though, I'm certainly intrigued enough to want to watch another one of the updated episodes.

One depressing thing was the advertisements that ran with this episode of STAR TREK, on WNLO in Buffalo, New York: bogus herbal supplements for penile enhancement and weight loss, dubious debt-consolidation services, and so on; it looks like advertisers think the demographic for the enhanced ST:TOS consists of suckers ...

2 Comments:

These type of adverts on most of my favorite shows are the reason why I'm choosing more and more not to watch my favorite shows when they're new and wait until the entire season comes out on DVD to watch them.

But I can't help but wonder what the networks think of their viewers. "Ahhh, it's a sci-fi show, so the average viewer is desperate, overweight, has financial problems, and believes his weiner is on the small side."

I really haven't liked what I've seen of the new Star Trek re-masters. The Motion picture seemed like somebody put some effort in,this seems lets do it as cheap and as quickly as possible. Star Trek is 40 year old,I don't think it's gonna win many new fans just by tarting up the Visual FX.